[music]
[John Covach] It's been 45 years since Led Zeppelin
released the first two albums Led Zeppelin I was released in the first half
of 1969 Led Zeppelin II
was released in the second half of '69. In many ways Led Zeppelin's music is
defined historically by the fourth album from 1971
because it has "Stairway to Heaven" on it. "Stairway to Heaven" is one of those songs
that people have said
is probably playing on the radio every second
of every day and has been since it was released. A real
iconic song in the rock repertory. And while
Led Zeppelin very much defined the 1970s in rock-and-roll
the roots of the group's sound and many of the important influence can really be found in
the second half of the 1960s.
[music: "A Whole Lotta Love"]
So the first two albums
really do show a lot of the range of what
Led Zeppelin was. They are essentially a group that came out
of the British blues rock tradition having come out of
the Yardbirds, and so there are hardly are any songs really on the first four
Led Zeppelin albums that cannot be attributed
in the one way shape or form to a previous blues number.
[music: guitar solo]
When we think about that second
Led Zeppelin album coming out at the second half of nineteen sixty-nine
it made it number one in the American charts, but
people don't realize that the album that it was fighting with for the number one slot
was Abbey Road. Some would think of as The Beatles sort of finest
achievement recording wise, and Led Zeppelin which was really
a fantastic record coming from an entirely different kind of blues influence kind
of place. We don't typically think of Led Zeppelin as really duking it out with The Beatles,
but in fact that really was the case in the second half of 1969.
[music: baseline from beginning of "How Many More TImes]
It's especially in the live shows that you really get a sense of who Led
Zeppelin were
as musicians. In fact, the studio recordings only capture a
kind of boiled down version of what Led Zeppelin music was. They would do shows
that lasted four hours, in which songs would be stretched out
with long jams and bringing in other kind of material. And so Led Zeppelin live
was really an almost kind of Grateful Dead
kind of experience. [music: first notes of "Heartbreaker"]
Many rock historians think of Led Zeppelin as being
one of the proto heavy metal
groups. In other words, something like "Whole Lotta Love" or "Heartbreaker" really
kind of define
what heavy metal is going to become into the 1970s and especially into
the '80s when really divides itself out
from the rest of the rock mainstream. And I think that's probably right but
it's also important to
to think about the fact that when that Led Zeppelin first came out in '69
with those first two records
most critics didn't think they were very good at all.
It's amazing to read those reviews of those first records and to think that
these critics that this music was terrible
and it would never survive and it turned out to be some of the most iconic
records in the history of
rock music.